Week 8 NFL Survivor Picks, Strategy: Back the Lions & Chargers
Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images. Pictured: Detroit Lions huddle.
The survivor concept is simple: Pick one team to win an NFL game every week. No spreads or totals – just winners. Once you use that team, you can't use them again – creating an element of strategy and long-term planning that makes these contests deceptively difficult.
Fortunately, this year we're partnering with our friends at Pool Genius to make things easier. They've built slate-leading tools to help conquer a variety of pool contests, including survivor.
The Seahawks handled their business as Week 7's most popular pick, but major upsets to the Bills, 49ers and others took out another 33% of the field. Smaller pools are likely down to their last few weeks, and bigger pools like DraftKings' $10 buy-in contest are down to around 10% of the field remaining.
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Those large fields still could require surviving 18 weeks to cash, with the Optimal Path tool at Pool Genius showing a 3.6% chance of any individual entry making it to the end (assuming the most popular winning team in each week was selected).
For that reason, we'll still want to target some contrarian options in order to reduce how many people we're likely to split the prize with if we do make it to the end.
My favorite feature of the site is the ability to customize for your pool type. Factors such as contest size and payout structure are a huge factor in survivor contests as smaller fields generally don't have any entries that survive all 18 weeks.
To give a glimpse of how that works, I'll be providing Pool Genius' top option for small (fewer than 50) and large (1,000+) pools.
Besides that, Pool Genius tracks pick selection data to help figure out contrarian options. This is helpful in larger pools since we're trying to optimize for expected value more than just the odds of winning.
Finally, Pool Genius uses projected future spreads to assign a future value to each team – which includes considering the scarcity of strong options on certain weeks. This is crucial as we don't want to burn the best teams when there are other strong options that week.
To get the full data, you'll need to sign up for the site. It's well worth it and also includes tools for taking down the increasingly popular pick'em contests that feature massive prize pools.
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Large Field: Lions
The big appeal of using the Lions this week is their popularity. After an embarrassing trouncing in Baltimore, the public perception of the NFC North leaders took a massive hit.
However, oddsmakers expect them to have no problem bouncing back for their Monday Night Football matchup with the Raiders. The Lions have been far better at home in recent years, and it's a considerably softer matchup — especially with the Raiders' uncertain quarterback situation. The Lions are one of six teams favored by at least eight points this week.
They're the third-most popular team, largely because most entries already have used most of the other heavily favored teams. While the Lions have some other favorable matchups down the road, this is still the highest implied odds they'll have for the rest of the season, which lessens the cost of burning them now.
All things considered, they're the highest EV option for large-field play — at least assuming you've burned the Bills and Chiefs, both of whom rank somewhat ahead of the Lions. Especially with the field condensing on a different team, there's a lot of leverage to be had in going a different direction.
Small Field: Chargers
While the Lions are a good choice in terms of preserving future value, the Chargers are a great one. They have their softest matchup of the season as they host the Bears in Los Angeles. The Chargers' projected win odds never come within 10% of their value in Week 8, so this is clearly the best time to use them.
The other angle here is that we aren't really concerned with eating the chalk in smaller pools like this. Based on our definition of small pools, there's likely only five or so fellow players left.
Therefore, we should be solving for safety first, future value second and uniqueness last.
With all of the teams at the top having very similar moneyline odds, that leaves us with future value as the deciding factor. Even if you've saved powerhouse teams like the Bills, Cowboys or Dolphins, they're better off left on the bench for at least one more week because things get dicey in a hurry starting in Week 9.
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